Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: David Irving's Hitler (Forward)
Summary: Robert Fulford's introduction to the 1993 book, "David
Irving's Hitler," which contains the translated essays of
the German historian Eberhard Ja"ckel.
Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.org
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords:
Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/jackel/fulford.intro
Last-Modified: 1996/02/25
[Archived and published with permission.]
FOREWORD
by Robert Fulford
When David Irving's work first began to appear, it seemed no
more than a journalist's attempt to re-work a few major
themes of the Second World War and its background. Today we
understand his project as something larger and more
sinister: a kind of retrospective moral upgrading of the
Third Reich and its leader, with all that implies for
contemporary politics in Germany and elsewhere. We also know
that his writings have been flowing into the swelling river
of Holocaust denial, refreshing it with bits of near-fact
and pseudo-fact, all intended to move a few more readers
toward the acceptance of an absurdity: the relative
innocence of the Nazis, or at least, the moral equivalence
of the Nazis and their enemies in the Second World War.
This context makes Eberhard Jackel's two essays on Irving's
methods even more valuable and fascinating than they were
when Jackel wrote them, some years before Irving became
notorious. Jackel demonstrates, with a scholar's precision,
the ingenious ways in which Irving manipulates evidence,
collecting whatever fits his preconceptions, misinterpreting
as he chooses, and ignoring whatever fails to support his
views. Over the years Irving has persuaded many readers in
the English-speaking countries that he provides an
understanding of the contents of certain German archives,
but it will be hard for anyone, after reading Jackel, to
think of Irving as anything but a propagandist.
At another time, in a different moral atmosphere, Irving's
work would not deserve such detailed scrutiny; his nimble
deceptions would be of interest only to specialists. In the
present climate, however, he is a dangerous man to ignore.
He plays to a section of the public that wants to believe
him, a section largely created by the entrepreneurs of
Holocaust denial.
When Holocaust denial first made itself heard in public, its
claims seemed so absurd that historians and journalists
dismissed it as a temporary aberration, an eccentricity on
the lunatic fringes of opinion. It wasn't until the early
1980s that we ceased to shrug it off, began to see it for
the historical phenomenon that it is, and began trying to
understand both its roots in traditional antisemitism and
its peculiar appeal in the present age.
It can be best understood not only as a branch of standard
antisemitism but also as a specific product of its own time,
roughly the period 1970 to the present. Holocaust denial,
like the Holocaust itself, is without precedent: no one, not
even Joseph Goebbels, has ever before produced so large and
imaginative a lie. Conspiracy theories have frequently
appeared during the last two hundred years, but all of them
have been, by comparison, modest. The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, in its many versions, asks us to believe
merely that a small group of men secretly agreed to take
coordinated action to destroy civilization, in order to
benefit themselves and their race. This much-reprinted
fiction seemed monstrous when it first went into wide
circulation, early in the 20th century, but it looks
insignificant when placed besides the Holocaust denial
thesis.
The deniers (I avoid calling them "revisionists," since I
think historical revision is honest and important work,
practised by all good historians) ask us to believe in a
conspiracy that involves hundreds of thousands of Iying
witnesses and at least an equal number of falsified
documents, all of them accepted by thousands of otherwise
sensible historians. Magically, no one connected with this
conspiracy has ever broken ranks and told the truth, or even
accidentally revealed the plot in a letter or overheard
phone conversation. The deniers therefore imply that "the
facts" can be learned only by inference, teased out of
obscure documents uncovered by Irving and others.
This is obviously unbelievable, but what makes it
exceptional is the extent to which it is unbelievable. It
would be far easier to believe in, say, the witches of
Salem, whose activities were blamed on magical powers from
the underworld.
The Holocaust deniers claim no such intervention from other-
worldly sources: they claim that this astounding project,
convincing the world that six million died when they didn't,
was carried out by more or less ordinary human beings. That
the Jews are said to have done it for practical gain (to
acquire both money and political support for Israel) isn't
particularly notable; that idea fits into ordinary
antsemitic rhetoric. What must make us stand back in wonder,
at both those who conceived the idea and those who claim to
believe it, is the titanic scale of the lie.
Who, after more than a moment's thought, would believe it?
A fair number of people, apparently, and not all of them
certified antisemites. In the spring of 1993 the Roper
Organization announced that 22 per cent of the American
adults it polled said that it seemed possible the Holocaust
had never happened; an additional 12 per cent said they did
not know if it was possible .[2] Even those who are
skeptical about opinion polling, believing that results
often reflect only half-hearted views, must acknowledge that
Holocaust denial has found an audience of considerable size.
Why? One reason is that our historical period distrusts
authority of any kind, believing (unless persuaded
otherwise) that statements issued by those in authority are
likely to be self-interested and routinely untruthful. In
this case, possibly, some people have decided that the
standard account given in history books and the media
represents the view of authority; Holocaust denial, on the
other hand, may be seen as the unofficial, outsider's view,
which is automatically more credible in many eyes. The
popularity of Holocaust denial rnay be one fruit of a whole
generation's shared belief that any statement endorsed by
power should be distrusted and that there is always a "real"
truth, hidden from all but a few.
Holocaust denial probably also profits from a widely held
view that if an idea is repeated often enough, and insisted
on vehemently enough, then it is probably entitled to "a
fair hearing." Of course, anything like a fair hearing (such
as the publication of unedited defense "evidence" by the
Canadian newspapers in the first of Ernst Zundel's trials in
1985) amounts to a wonderful gift to the deniers, who are
allowed to spread their poisonous ideas further. Even if
eight out of ten readers decide that they are fools or
scoundrels, the deniers still gain. Simply allowing them into
the forum of public discussion (as many schools are now being
pressured to do) gives their ideas a certain validity.
Perhaps a general change in our culture's view of history
has done even more to create a kind of welcome for the
deniers. One of the most striking characteristics of this
period is the waning of history as a subject of study,
contemplation, and discussion. During the last thirty or
so years, our civilization has grown steadily less concerned
with the past and more concerned with the present and the
future. Those who believe that a knowledge of the past is
crucial to all human enterprises have become a minority
(consider how infrequently politicians and other leaders
invoke historical precedent or tradition).
In this vacuum, when a large part of the population has lost
any sense of history and how it is written, a bizarre thesis
like Holocaust denial can flourish. Perhaps the most
pressing and painful of the lessons forced upon us by Irving
and the Holocaust deniers is that we need to renew our
relationship with history. If we are not attentive to the
past, if we carelessly forget it or regard it as only
marginally important, then the past can become a playground
for evil.
1. Robert Fulford, a Toronto journalist, writes a weekly
column for The Globe and Mail. He has written frequently on
Holocaust denial and related issues.
2. Quoted by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, 30
April 1993.
Work Cited
Robert Fulford, Irving's Hitler (Introduction), Port Angeles,
Washington: Ben-Simon Publications, 1993. pp 2-3)

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